Haven’t been able to update the past few days, because the family and I are on vacation way up north in Long Lake, N.Y.
But I will, quickly, address one thing: The holier-than-thou-bullshit charges many fired after my latest Bonds post.
Believe me, I understand the sentiment. I really do. What I don’t understand, however, is this continued acceptance of cheating. Someone mentioned that I clearly have a vandetta against Barry Bonds. Sooooo not true: I have a vandetta against the steroid era; about ballplayers who cheated, knowingly, to enhance their careers.
I’ve written this before, but it holds true: I consider Sal Fasano, the longtime journeyman catcher, to be a good friend. I believe him, 100 percent, when he says he never used PED. Right now, at age 37, Sal is slumming in Triple A with 19-, 20-, 21-year-old kids, stopping off at Pizza Hut or Burger King en route to some half-filled stadium. While he loves the game, that’s not his motivation. His motivation is to provide for him family, to reach his maximum pension and to continue to receive the health care professional baseball offers, which affords him the best care for his ill son.
If Sal never used, and others catches have (which we know to be true: Zaun, LoDuca, Pratt, etc …), it is more than a mere “part of the game.” It’s semi-criminal: Using an illegal drug to boost your own status at the expense of another.
I just don’t understand the thinking here. Yeah, guys took shortcuts in the 50s and 60s and 70s and 80s. But this is the era I’ve covered, and a longstanding pattern of cheating doesn’t make it right.
Yeah, maybe I am holier than thou. But the phrasing itself sort of implies that I’ve decided to take similarly evil steps in my own life, and now I’m condeming others. Not true: I don’t plagerize. I don’t ask better writers to do my work. I don’t swap bylines with Buster Olney or Jonathan Eig. I try my best, and if my best isn’t good enough, I accept it and either try harder, or move on.
Word.
PS: And as for the Rocker comment (see comments), John knew the entire time that we were doing an interview. He told me things off the record that I never used, thus implying that he was aware everything else was on the record.
